During my time at the NCCA, one of the projects we undertook was titled "Innovations", which (if you hadn't already guessed) was an assignment where the outcome had to be something new and innovative. Our lecturer explained to us in one of his lectures that innovation had many meanings, and that the assignment didn't have to be something which was "innovative to the world", but that it can be innovative to yourself and open up a new realm of possibilities. Because of this, I decided to base my project off of Physically Based Rendering and Shading as well as procedural texturing, which lead me to using Substance Designer.

Project Abstract:

A research, development and production project titled “A study in PBR Procedural texturing, focusing on the weathering and decay of materials” By this, I did research into what differs Physically Based Rendering workflows from other methods, and what benefits Procedural texturing could provide as opposed to other methods of texturing, using Substance Designer and Marmoset Toolbag as my workflow toolset. Utilising said research, the aim was to develop, iterate and lookdev multiple substances procedurally in Substance Designer following PBR rules, to visually represent various stages of weathering and decay within my chosen materials, producing final rendered artefacts with Marmoset Toolbag.

In the theory section of my paper, I talk about the research I undertook when looking into what makes Physically Based Rendering and Shading different to previous methods, including research into roughness and metallicness, as well as (at the time of writing) current examples of PBR being used. I also talk about procedural texturing within Substance Designer as well as my utilisation of the program.

In terms of the practise of the project, I discuss the research I undertook into varying types of weathering, decay and erosion of different materials, and give summaries of how I created each variant of the 5 substances I created as part of the project.

Below is a slideshow of renders, each one a different variant of weathering, decay or erosion which I produced for this project.